2. Chris #2
“The Olympic sample was clean,” Anders said. “Completely. No adverse findings.”
The room tilted, and he dug his fingers into the armrest for purchase.
“I knew I was clean, I didn’t take… But…” Chris choked out. “What does that mean?”
Anders sighed. “Technically, the violation is tied to the sample from April, from London.”
Chris’s breath caught in his throat. April.
The London Marathon. The race where he’d shown everyone what he could do.
It had been such a good race—perfect conditions, everything working for him instead of against him—and it had earned him his Olympic call-up.
But before that, there had been so much pressure.
Suddenly Hewitt had been thought to be out of the running, and there was an Olympic spot if he could just push enough to reach it…
It had felt like all eyes were on him, like the expectations of his sponsors held more weight than his own integrity.
Then there was the new nutritionist with the clipped accent and the little packets they’d told him were standard.
Standard, sure, but they had to be cycled.
Chris wasn’t an idiot, he’d known what that meant, he just hadn’t been willing to admit it because everything had felt like it was going so right.
He’d beaten the standard by a mile in London and passed his screening, so he had carried on, because it worked. He’d never fucking admitted it to anyone, and it shouldn’t have mattered because he knew that shit had been out of his system by the time the Olympics rolled around. He knew it.
“They went back,” Anders said. “Re-analysed it.”
“Why?” Chris asked. Too quickly. He sounded guilty even to his own ears.
Anders spoke slowly and deliberately. “Because they were given intelligence.”
“Intelligence?” Chris echoed dumbly. “Intelligence about what?”
“Something the initial screening may have missed, something specific to look for. And with targeted analysis… I don’t have the details, but…”
The words blurred together. Chris suddenly had the sensation of being violently exposed.
“So someone,” he said carefully, “told them to look.”
“Yes. And exactly what to look for.”
Chris’s heart began to race. He could feel it in his throat. A roar sounded in his ears. Carl. There was no one else who could have known. No one with the access to his team that Carl had. And it was Carl’s own son who had replaced him. It felt too convenient.
When Carl Owens had signed him, straight out of his first year of uni, he’d figured he had it made.
He didn’t need to finish his degree because he was about to be the next big thing.
And sure, marathon runners didn’t earn footballer money, but they had longer careers, and the paydays at major marathons were nothing to sneeze at.
Carl had encouraged him to go all in, so he had.
Chris thought of Carl’s pointed questions after London. Was he sure everything was on track? How was he dealing with the pressure?
“You think it was me,” Anders said quietly. “Chris, I’ll admit I had some suspicions in the spring, but I’d never act without facts.”
The knowledge that Anders had been suspicious weighed heavy. He’d thought everything was fine, that he was managing it, hiding it. Chris let out a long sigh. “I know you wouldn’t. Not you. I…”
“You think someone close to you tipped them off?” Anders said.
Chris swallowed. “I think some people benefited more than others.”
“Elliot wouldn’t. I don’t know who it was. They won’t tell us. They never do, but I know Elliot Owens, and he would never do that to another competitor.”
It wasn’t that Chris disagreed, but Elliot’s father was another story, wasn’t he? “Someone did it, though. They don’t just go fishing.”
“No,” Anders said. “They don’t.”
Shame rose hot in Chris, choking his words. “I was clean. At the Olympics. I was so careful.” His voice cracked. “But I’m ruined anyway. All that work, and I’m finished.”
“You’re not ruined, you’re sanctioned,” Anders corrected. “There’s a difference. You sit out the ban, train hard and come back strong, debt paid to the sport. That’s how it works. It’s how it’s always worked.”
Chris almost laughed. “Four years.”
“Yes,” Anders replied. Chris was pretty sure he was rolling his eyes. “And you’re twenty-one.”
“Not yet,” Chris replied automatically. “Next week.”
“Well happy early birthday then, kid.”
Chris did laugh this time. Cold and bitter. “You think being young matters? You know what four years is in this sport.”
“I do.” A frustrated huff sounded down the line. ”And I also know you have a choice to make. Fight it, see if you’ve got a shot at a reduction, argue it wasn’t deliberate, that it was tampering or accidental, or had no impact. Otherwise you disappear, do your time, and let them forget.”
Disappear. That was what he wanted right now, but he thought of his parents in the other room and their unwavering support. Of his brother and how fucking smug he would be if Chris really did amount to nothing after all. “I…I don’t know.”
“Have you spoken to anyone? Kelly will still be available to you,” Anders said.
Chris grimaced. The team therapist, even though he wasn’t part of the team anymore. He didn’t respond.
Anders let out a heavy sigh. “Look, there’s a window. If you want to aim for a reduction, you’ll need to submit soon. You should speak to Carl about that at the very least.”
Chris grimaced. “What would I even say? My physio slipped and shoved pills down my throat? Or someone drugged my smoothie?”
Anders’s tone was wry when he replied. “Is that what happened?”
Chris shook his head, but couldn’t quite say it out loud. Eventually, he spoke softly. “Would you even want me back?” It felt too vulnerable to voice, but he had to.
“Of course,” Anders answered immediately.
“Look, kid, you made a mistake. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. A whole training group was dinged last year.
I don’t want to tell you everyone’s doing it because they aren’t, but enough are that it’s…
well, it’s a problem. But you need to ignore the noise.
Those voices protesting so loudly online—I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them is caught next. ”
Chris swallowed. “Thanks, Anders.”
“Take care of yourself, kid. Speak to Kelly, and if you need anything, just ring. Once things die down a bit, see if you can get down to London. We can get some training in. You can come back from this, Chris.”
Anders sounded so confident that it made Chris want to believe him. He wasn’t there yet, though. His future hung before him like a gaping maw full of never-ending darkness and shame.
He let the line go dead, sinking further into the sofa as he contemplated Anders’s words.
As confident as Anders sounded, Chris didn’t see a way out, and the idea of speaking to someone else about it, even a trained professional, felt even more terrifying than giving up.
Because he had done it, the thing they were all saying.
He didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t admit it either; that felt too final, like all the other things that surrounded that time meant nothing, like all that mattered was those stupid little packets.
But four years.
Four years out of competition. Long enough for a career to quietly die—if his hadn’t already. By then he’d be no one. No sponsor would go near an athlete with an undisputed doping charge, not in a sport already thick with suspicion, not without a damn good reason.
And he didn’t have one.
Anders was right; there’d be another headline soon, another name to take his place.
But Chris knew his story wouldn’t earn the same shrug of sympathy some others did.
In marathon running, a big win could change everything.
In the countries that produced the sport’s greats, it could pull a family out of poverty.
With stakes like that, the line blurred, and risks started to look like chances.
But Chris had never been running from that kind of life.
He was a middle-class kid from Wales. For him, winning wasn’t survival.
It was just something he’d really fucking wanted.
Weeks dragged on and everything was very bad. It was difficult some days to remind himself what the point of any of this was. His friends would be starting back at uni any day now and he still hadn’t seen them, hadn’t so much as responded to a well-intentioned text.
Some days, one sad look from his mum was enough to send him into a guilt spiral of wishing he’d never been born in the first place.
Other days though, other days there was a bright spot.
Just the one, and it was bloody embarrassing to say, but since that first night, Chris hadn’t been able to tear himself away from the captivating camboy with the soft blue hair.
He was the prettiest, poshest English boy he’d ever come across, and on paper, he was miles away from being the kind of man who usually held Chris’s attention, but he’d become completely obsessed.
He never missed a stream. The money he had saved up from past sponsorships and wins was being put solely towards tipping Quick&D1rty on livestreams. Frivolous?
Probably. But it wasn’t like he had any other expenses right now.
Being a pariah was surprisingly good for his savings.
Life was shit, and if he wanted one nice thing, then he was willing to pay for it. His dad didn’t need to know what he was doing with his dwindling bank account. The reserves of his old sponsorships would run dry someday, but it didn’t matter, did it? Did anything?